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    My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl's Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize
    My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl's Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize
    My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl's Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize
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    My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl's Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize

    By Jody Williams

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    About this ebook

    As Eve Ensler says in her inspired foreword to this book, "Jody Williams is many things—a simple girl from Vermont, a sister of a disabled brother, a loving wife, an intense character full of fury and mischief, a great strategist, an excellent organizer, a brave and relentless advocate, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. But to me Jody Williams is, first and foremost, an activist."

    From her modest beginnings to becoming the tenth woman—and third American woman—to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Jody Williams takes the reader through the ups and downs of her tumultuous and remarkable life. In a voice that is at once candid, straightforward, and intimate, Williams describes her Catholic roots, her first step on a long road to standing up to bullies with the defense of her deaf brother Stephen, her transformation from good girl to college hippie at the University of Vermont, and her protest of the war in Vietnam. She relates how, in 1981, she began her lifelong dedication to global activism as she battled to stop the U.S.-backed war in El Salvador.

    Throughout the memoir, Williams underlines her belief that an "average woman"—through perseverance, courage and imagination—can make something extraordinary happen. She tells how, when asked if she’d start a campaign to ban and clear anti-personnel mines, she took up the challenge, and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) was born. Her engrossing account of the genesis and evolution of the campaign, culminating in 1997 with the Nobel Peace Prize, vividly demonstrates how one woman’s commitment to freedom, self-determination, and human rights can have a profound impact on people all over the globe.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of California Press
    Release dateMar 12, 2013
    ISBN9780520955332
    My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl's Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize
    Author

    Jody Williams

    Jody Williams, who received the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work to ban landmines, is founding chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, launched in January 2006. She is the recipient of fifteen honorary degrees, and in 2004 Forbes magazine named her one of the hundred most powerful women in the world in its first such list. Since 1998 she has served as a Campaign Ambassador for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which she helped found in 1992. Williams holds the Sam and Cele Keeper Endowed Professorship in Peace and Social Justice at the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. In 2012–13, she became the inaugural Jane Addams Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Social Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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      My Name Is Jody Williams - Jody Williams

      img_0001

      Highlighting the lives and experiences of marginalized communities, the select titles of this imprint draw from sociology, anthropology, law, and history, as well as from the traditions of journalism and advocacy, to reassess mainstream history and promote unconventional thinking about contemporary social and political issues. Their authors share the passion, commitment, and creativity of Executive Editor Naomi Schneider.

      The publisher gratefully acknowledges the

      generous support of the following:

      The General Endowment Fund of the University

      of California Press Foundation

      The Director's Circle of the University of California

      Press Foundation, whose members are:

      Tom Benet

      Nancy & Roger Boas

      Earl & June Cheit

      Carol & John Field

      Michelle Lee Flores

      Harriett & Richard Gold

      Gary & Cary Hart

      Betty Hine and Holly Suich

      Carole & Ted Krumland

      Marilyn Lee & Harvey Schneider

      Judith & Kim Maxwell

      Thomas & Barbara Metcalf

      Alejandro Portes

      Lucinda Reinold

      Tommi & Roger Robinson

      Meryl & Robert Selig

      John & Priscilla Walton

      My Name Is Jody Williams

      CALIFORNIA SERIES

      IN PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY

      The California Series in Public Anthropology emphasizes the anthropologist's role as an engaged intellectual. It continues anthropology's commitment to being an ethnographic witness, to describing, in human terms, how life is lived beyond the borders of many readers’ experiences. But it also adds a commitment, through ethnography, to reframing the terms of public debate—transforming received, accepted understandings of social issues with new insights, new framings.

      Series Editor: Robert Borofsky

      (Hawaii Pacific University)

      Contributing Editors:

      Philippe Bourgois (University of Pennsylvania),

      Paul Farmer (Partners in Health),

      Alex Hinton (Rutgers University),

      Carolyn Nordstrom (University of Notre Dame), and

      Nancy Scheper-Hughes (UC Berkeley)

      University of California Press Editor:

      Naomi Schneider

      My Name Is

      Jody Williams

      A Vermont Girl's Winding Path

      to the Nobel Peace Prize

      Jody Williams

      Foreword by Eve Ensler

      img_0002

      UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

      BerkeleyLos AngelesLondon

      University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

      University of California Press

      Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

      University of California Press, Ltd.

      London, England

      © 2013 by Jody Williams

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Williams, Jody, 1950-

      My name is Jody Williams : a Vermont girl's winding path to the Nobel Peace Prize/Jody Williams. — 1st Edition.

      pages cm. — (California series in public anthropology ; 25)

      ISBN 978-0-520-27025-1 (alk. paper)

      eISBN 9780520955332

      1. Williams, Jody, 1950—2. Pacifists—United States— Biography. 3. Women Nobel Prize winners—United States—Biography. 4. Nobel Prize winners—United States—Biography. I. Title.

      JZ5540.2.W56 2013

      327.1'743—dc23

      [B]2012031155

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      22    21    20    19    18    17    16    15    14    13

      10    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1

      In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

      For my family.

      To activists everywhere who work for a world of

      sustainable peace, equality, and justice for us all.

      And to those who want to contribute to change but

      aren't sure what they do will matter. Every action

      we take for the benefit of others matters deeply.

      Find your passion and work on it, even a couple

      of hours a month. It will change your world

      in ways you can't possibly imagine.

      CONTENTS

      Foreword by Eve Ensler

      Prologue: October 10, 1997

      PART I.

      IF YOU COULD BE ANYONE

      1. What Do You Mean I Can't Be the Pope?

      2. A Special Place in Hell

      3. Claude, Casey, and the Corvair Convertible

      4. V-I-E-T-N-A-M, Marriage, and Mexico

      Illustrations

      PART II.

      THE MAKING OF A GRASSROOTS ACTIVIST

      5. The Pamphlet

      6. Boots on the Ground: Sandinista Interlude

      7. Dinner with the Death Squad

      8. I Thought I Wanted a Straight Job—Instead I Got Landmines

      9. Landmines and Love

      10. The Ottawa Process and the 1997 Landmine Ban World Tour

      11. Whirlwind: October 10 to December 10, 1997

      Epilogue

      Acknowledgments

      FOREWORD

      Eve Ensler

      Jody Williams is many things—a simple girl from Vermont, a sister of a disabled brother, a loving wife, an intense character full of fury and mischief, a great strategist, an excellent organizer, a brave and relentless advocate, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. But to me Jody Williams is, first and foremost, an activist.

      What is an activist? The dictionary says, an especially active, vigorous advocate of a cause, especially a political cause. My sense—and I think it is most clear in this stirring memoir—is that an activist is someone who cannot help but fight for something. That person is not usually motivated by a need for power or money or fame, but in fact is driven slightly mad by some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to act to make it better.

      I have often wondered at what moment one becomes an activist. Are we born with the activist gene, and then some event or incident catalyzes it into being? Is it a deaf brother, abused and cruelly treated? Is it witnessing unkindness to those we love or being raped or beaten and undone ourselves and surviving through the love of others and then feeling compelled to give back the same?

      Many of us are accidental activists. We didn't necessarily or consciously choose to devote our lives to ending war or violence against women or racism or poverty or sexual oppression, or to fighting for the environment, but our survival became so clearly wrapped in the struggle, we had no choice.

      The big question, of course, is why do some shut down and move away in the face of power and oppression and others move into action? I think if we could resolve this riddle, we would unlock millions of sleeping activists who could possibly help save this world and transform suffering. Some of the secrets are found in this book.

      What is most compelling about Jody's writing about her remarkable life and deeds is how unremarkable she makes it sound. It is simple, straightforward, unembellished. It all seems logical, one thing growing out of another. There were landmines destroying the lives of thousands of people worldwide. There was a goal to ban them. There was the insane belief that this was possible. (By the way, I think another characteristic of activists is this dogged faith that change is possible even in the face of what on the surface seems like an utter impossibility.)

      Jody had a goal she wanted to accomplish—banning landmines—and she employed her powers, her smarts, her wisdom and engaged all those around her to bring about that end. I think one of the wonderful things about her winning the Nobel Peace Prize is that it honored all the activists in her project who made it happen, and for that matter, it honored activism everywhere.

      I have pretty much lost faith in governments or world leaders or patriarchal institutions to reverse the sad and terrifying trajectory of human beings. My hope, my life, lies with activists. I think of the Occupy Wall Street movement, environmental activists in the rain forests, domestic workers’ unions, Pussy Riot, LBGT workers, V-Day activists, antiviolence and antiwar activists, antiracist, fair trade, hunger, animal rights activists. The list is fortunately endless, and these activists are born every minute and are rising everywhere to reenvision and give birth to the new world. They are obsessed, unstoppable, passionate, creative in finding ways over and around obstacles. They are community builders, often humorous, sometimes and necessarily belligerent, insomniacs, usually dancers, celebrators of life.

      This book charts Jody's activist journey with a whole lot of other amazing people to successfully ban landmines. It will inspire you to believe that what you do matters a lot and to follow your path and trust your outrage and sorrow. If we are to find a way out of the current madness, it will take a whole lot more of us filled with the spirit, mischief, fury, and determination of Jody Williams.

      PROLOGUE

      October 10, 1997

      The phone did not ring at 3 A.M. on Friday, October 10, 1997. It didn't ring at 3:15. It didn't ring at 3:30 either. If we didn't expect it to ring, we certainly hoped it would. But it didn't. Deflated, at least Goose and I could finally let it go and go to sleep. Since we'd finished cleaning the kitchen around midnight, we'd been tossing and turning in bed for hours.

      We dozed off only to be woken up by the harsh ringing of the phone. I looked at the clock. It was 4 A.M. My heart was pounding. It was a combination of adrenaline from being startled awake and weird expectation. I picked up the phone to hear the singsong accent of a man who said he was calling from a Norwegian TV station.

      He asked if I was me. When I said I was, he asked where I'd be in another forty minutes. As if I'd be leaping out of bed now and driving around the country roads of Putney, Vermont? I bit back any number of smart-ass retorts and simply said, Here. The phone went dead in my ear.

      Goose and I looked at each other, wide-eyed and unsettled. Why had a call come at 4 A.M.? And why was it from Norwegian television and not the Nobel Committee?

      Just a few weeks before, we'd spent a month in Oslo during the successful negotiations of the treaty banning antipersonnel landmines. Some of our Norwegian friends had told us then that the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which I'd coordinated since getting it off the ground in 1992, was a front-runner for the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. Media had buzzed about it the entire time we were there, even though we'd deflected their questions.

      The last night in Oslo, we'd been out celebrating the success of the treaty negotiations. One of the Norwegian diplomats had whispered to us that if we were awarded the Peace Prize, we'd get a call from the Nobel Committee around 3 A.M. our time. They tried to give recipients time to prepare themselves before the chair of the committee made the announcement at a press conference a couple of hours later in Oslo.

      But no call had come at 3 A.M. And when the phone rang an hour later, it was a cryptic exchange with someone from Norwegian television, not the Nobel Committee. Goose and I started speculating, and the only thing that seemed reasonable to us was that the media wanted to know where we were so they could get the ICBL's reaction to not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize after so much hype and expectation. Now we had about forty minutes to try not to fret.

      The phone rang again promptly at 4:40 A.M. It was the same guy, who again identified himself as being with a Norwegian TV station. There was no dramatic pause, he quickly went on to say that he'd been authorized to inform me that the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and its coordinator Jody Williams were the recipients of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

      I repeated the words so Goose would know what was going on, then asked the guy who had authorized him to say that. He only repeated that he'd been authorized to let me know. He told me to turn on my television in about twenty minutes to hear the announcement live on CNN. I told him we didn't have a TV. Well, he said, turn on the radio.

      When I told him there was no radio either, he laughed and said he'd keep me on the line so I could hear it directly from Norway. Stunned, I wouldn't be able to believe it until I heard the Nobel Committee say it out loud. I asked for about ten minutes to call my family. He said he'd call back then.

      Mom screamed, Hoo-hoo and yippeeee! It was obvious she'd not slept any better than Goose and I that night. My father could sleep through almost anything. I asked Mom to call my sisters, Mary Beth and Janet, and my brother Mark to tell them to turn on their televisions and watch the announcement live. Then Goose and I waited until the phone rang again. We sat in bed with the receiver between our ears and listened as the press conference began. Francis Sejersted, then chair of the Nobel Committee, read the announcement, which captures the essence of our work in the Landmine Campaign:

      The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1997, in two equal parts, to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and to the campaign's coordinator Jody Williams for their work for the banning and clearing of antipersonnel mines.

      There are at present probably over one hundred million antipersonnel mines scattered over large areas on several continents. Such mines maim and kill indiscriminately and are a major threat to the civilian populations and to the social and economic development of the many countries affected.

      The ICBL and Jody Williams started a process which in the space of a few years changed a ban on antipersonnel mines from a vision to a feasible reality. The Convention which will be signed in Ottawa in December this year is to a considerable extent a result of their important work.

      There are already over 1,000 organizations, large and small, affiliated to the ICBL, making up a network through which it has been possible to express and mediate a broad wave of popular commitment in an unprecedented way. With the governments of several small and medium-sized countries taking the issue up and taking steps to deal with it, this work has grown into a convincing example of an effective policy for peace.

      The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to express the hope that the Ottawa process will win even wider support. As a model for similar processes in the future, it could prove of decisive importance to the international effort for disarmament and peace.

      I can't remember our immediate reaction when I hung up the phone, because we heard people outside. I crept to the window to see several cars parked in the driveway. Panicky, we threw on the clothes we'd taken off only a few hours earlier and went out to see who they were.

      Journalists? The house sat at the end of a mile-long unmarked dirt road in the-middle-of-nowhere-Putney. We weren't prepared for them, and even less so for the onslaught that would follow. By 5:15 I was serving coffee to them in my kitchen. They were the first and last journalists we let in the house that day.

      I was so thankful it turned out to be a glorious eighty-degree Indian summer day in Vermont. I kept wondering what we would have done with all the people if it had been raining.

      By midmorning, the field in front of the house overlooking the beaver pond was studded with satellite feed trucks. Eight or nine of them. There were TV cameras dotting the field. On the deck. At my front steps. The day didn't stop, except for one ten-minute break, until the last TV truck rolled out at 8 P.M.

      The interviews flowed from one to the next almost seamlessly. Journalists arrived from all of the morning TV news shows in the United States. From several in Norway, Canada, Sweden, and other places I can't begin to remember. There were some from several different shows on the BBC. We had local media. National media. International media.

      All of them wanted to know how we'd use the Nobel Prize to pressure the Clinton administration especially, and other holdout states, to get on board. For the whole day we had media attention resulting from the Nobel announcement to further the message of the ICBL: Come to Ottawa. Sign the treaty. Ratify it as soon as possible. Join the tide of history.

      I had no time that day to think about the course of my life and how I'd come to be surrounded by journalists, talking about antipersonnel landmines and the Nobel Peace Prize. No one would ever have predicted it. That a quiet kid from Vermont had become a hardheaded, straight-talking woman who'd helped change our world. But I did, and this is my story.

      PART I

      If You Could Be Anyone

      CHAPTER ONE

      What Do You Mean I Can't Be the Pope?

      At some point in grade school, I finally realized I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of becoming the first woman pope. Then again, I'd also been slow in noticing I couldn't even be an altar boy. Perhaps that turned out to be not such a bad thing, but at the time it felt unfair. Why boys only? What was so special about them?

      I so wanted to be clothed in magnificent vestments one day, head bowed to receive the Papal Crown. And of course, I'd be fluent in Latin. At church on Sundays, I'd imagine myself gloriously robed, standing at the altar, cloaked in incense. The tiniest whiff of its burning fragrance still summons vestiges of my religious upbringing.

      Even after my papal dreams were shattered, I remained mystified by the pageantry, the drama, and the majesty of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Simply saying those four words made me feel transported. I was enthralled by the stories of the lives of our brave and tragic saints and martyrs. I, too, wanted to be resolute and heroic and leave a big mark on the world. No one would ever have guessed that one day I would manage something of a lasting mark, but it most definitely wasn't in the category of saint or martyr.

      As a young child I'd breathlessly awaited my chance to begin attending catechism, where I'd learn about sin and how to avoid it. The Ten Commandments, the categories of sins and their implications, and Church rules would be taught to us to help guide us in life. Then, in my little white dress and veil, I'd march down the center aisle in church and receive my First Communion. I would be absolved of my sins, Catholic ground zero. It came fast. We received First Communion around the age of seven, at which point we were supposedly able to reason clearly and therefore reliably exercise our free will to avoid sin.

      My younger sister, Mary Beth, who is now the nurse in the family, insists that studies demonstrate today's youth aren't fully capable of understanding the consequences of their actions, religious or otherwise, until their early twenties. Ages ago, we were expected to get on with it at seven. Now they can't manage until they reach drinking age? Would that mean they shouldn't have their First Communion until reaching twenty-one?

      In any case, and unfortunately for my seven-year-old head, catechism had its downside. I was a quiet kid with a tendency to fear authority. It didn't come from my parents, Ruth and John. Disinclined to exact punishment, they were also very bad at no. But once I'd begun catechism, life smacked of no. Almost everything in my world seemed to be a sin or to threaten one. Sometimes the simple act of living felt like running temptation's gauntlet, as if hydra-headed demons of evil were waiting at every turn, trying to lead me sinfully astray.

      If Mom corrected me for some minor wrongdoing, like trying to beat up my younger siblings, I worried I was earning a one-way ticket to hell. With catechism's emphasis on sin rather than the compassion and forgiveness of Jesus, avoiding the inferno sometimes felt impossibly beyond my reach. Fear trumped reason, and I lived with it for years.

      I prayed every night before bed. There was the standard Now I lay me down to sleep ... and then you could mention your specific issues to God. I always prayed hard for a miracle so my older brother, Steve, would become able to hear. I added my own little pleas to the multitudinous ones of my parents, who'd been praying for the same thing almost from the day of his birth. My dad stopped by church every day for solitude and consolation. Although at some point Mom gave up praying for the Steve miracle—her knees raw from novenas on his behalf— Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, remains her primary saint.

      At some point in the lives of all five of her offspring, each of us either became or threatened to become the particular lost cause Mom prayed to save. While no patron of her saints, these days I am convinced my mother has powerful energy that she prays into her universe. When I need a little extra protection or strength, I get Mom on the phone and ask for her prayers to Saint Jude. It makes both of us feel better. Also, from time to time—and even though we've had amusing debates about religion—I fire off an email to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and ask for his prayerful support, too. So far he hasn't turned me down.

      Perhaps surprisingly, these days I find satisfaction in contemplating Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god. He is revered as a remover of obstacles, an attribute that seems to parallel Jude's intervention on behalf of lost causes. Ganesh makes me smile, in contrast to my unhappy recollections of sin and Catholic hellfire. But when I was a kid, even the dashing of my papal hopes didn't alter the fact that being Catholic was a central element of my life. I came by it naturally.

      My grandmother, Marianna Bertolino, whose name was ultimately shortened to Anna or Ann after she came to America, was born in Italy. At the beginning of the 1900s, when she was about a year old, her parents left that seat of the Church's power for the tiny village of Poultney, Vermont. It didn't matter that years later my grandmother married my grandfather, Ralph Colvin, a self-proclaimed heathen. To get her hand, Ralph had to solemnly agree that any offspring would be raised Catholic. The same promise was required of any of the other heathens who wanted to marry my grandmother's seven sisters: it was the Catholic way or no way.

      Therefore, my mother, Ruth, and her younger brother, Chuck, were raised in the Church. As was I and my two brothers and two sisters. It didn't matter that my father's side of the family, who we almost never saw in any case, was Scottish-Welsh Presbyterian. Despite the small percentage of our blood that is Italian, we kids all cleaved to that heritage and its religion. Ralph and Anna B. Colvin were my real grandparents. Dad's parents didn't figure hardly at all in our family equation. He didn't particularly like them himself.

      ·    ·    ·

      My father, John Clarence Williams, was drop-dead gorgeous. I have a picture of him at around age eighteen, and to my eyes he's virtually smoldering from beneath its sepia tint. To me he smacks of James Dean. When fifteen-year-old Ruth Colvin first saw him, her heart did a triple somersault, and it never stopped. She's related the story a million jillion times, but it always feels fresh in her telling.

      Jody, she says, seeing her past through luminous eyes. When I first saw John, he was just home from World War II, walking downtown in his navy whites. He was so handsome I ran myself ragged trying to ‘casually’ appear in his line of sight no matter where he was. She bounces around the living room in imitation of her teenage self trying to nonchalantly chase down my father. Throughout their fifty-eight years together, anytime Mom saw my father unexpectedly, she got butterflies in her stomach. Just like the very first time I saw him, she says.

      Two months after they met, Dad asked my grandfather for permission to give Mom an engagement ring for her sixteenth birthday. Uninspired at the thought, and predictably, Ralph said flat-out no. He wasn't

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